Ewan MacColl, 74; Scottish Folk Singer
Scottish folk singer Ewan MacColl, who wrote Roberta Flack’s 1972 Grammy-winning hit “The First Time Ever I Saw Your Face,” died in a London hospital Sunday.
Trish Carn, a recording executive and friend of the family, said he was 74 and had died after heart surgery.
MacColl, son of a Scottish ironworker and part-time folk singer, grew up in northern England and left school at 14, essentially to become a poet.
He roamed the slums of Manchester, worked on and off in menial factory jobs and embraced a political radicalism that was later to produce songs against nuclear weapons, apartheid and the Vietnam War.
When folk singing became popular, MacColl, who never had a formal musical education, gained celebrity. He married Peggy Seeger, half-sister of the American folk singer Pete Seeger.
MacColl once defined folk singing as “the music of the people who produce the wealth . . . the peasants.”
He is survived by his wife and five children, who include pop singer Kirsty MacColl.
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